Effective immediately, you are the recorder of all given names, and no newborn’s birth certificate is official until it has received your stamp of approval.

After a giddy moment or two – think of all the names you’ll see! – reality sets in. Will you impose rules? What will the rules be? Would you establish an official list of approved names? Guidelines? Is there an appeals process?

In the US and much of the world, we tend to respect the parents’ right to choose a child’s name, even if that name raises a few eyebrows. Case in point: the baby briefly known as Martin McCullough has now been restored to his birth name, Messiah